Recently, at Ignite Seattle!, a bi-monthly event for geeks and makers, Avi Geiger, a hardware architect, gave a talk on power consumption that reminded me to "turn it off". Paraphrasing from his talk, turning off your computer can save you about $84 per year on your electric bill. Here's how he came up with that figure:

Your average household lightbulb is 100w. If you leave it on for a month it equals about 720KWh (kilowatt hours) of power consumption, which costs you about $7 per month or $84 per year. Your standard desktop computer uses about the same amount of power as a standard lightbulb.

By turning off your computer when you're done, you can cut your power consumption and your electric bill. Putting the computer in sleep or standby mode is nearly as good, as long as you don't use screensavers. You can also optimize your laptop to save power, and thus battery life.

Geiger's full, five-minute talk is viewable here. Deepak Singh, a local contributor for Worldchanging Seattle, also pointed me to another post on this topic.

Described as "infotainment" by one attendee, Ignite Seattle! combines project-based contests and lightning talks. The next event is planned for April 5. Watch for the speaker line up here.

Plugging everything into a surge protector and then turning that off at night -- or when you're done -- can also save power. That's especially true for home electronics because they draw power from the line even when they're turned off (phantom load).

....and after turning of you computer, switch to renweables!
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